John Apostate. HABERLY (Loyd).

John Apostate An Idyl of the Quays.

Title within a woodcut architectural border, six woodcut vignettes, 11 woodcut initials and one woodcut tail-piece, the first two words of the text printed in red.

First Edition. 8vo. [213 x 155 x 14 mm]. [1]f, 10, [4] pp. Bound by Loyd Haberly in blue goatskin over thick boards, the covers with a border of two blind fillets and dots extending over the spine and blind fillets and palmettes either side of the bands, the spine lettered downwards in gilt in the second, third and fourth panels, and blind palmettes in the first and fifth, plain endleaves, untrimmed edges. (Slightly marked).
Long Crendon, Buckinghamshire: The Seven Acres Press, 1927.

Number 51 of 125 copies, signed by Haberly. The binding is unsigned but Haberly was in the habit of binding copies of his own works and this has characteristic features, such as the heavy boards and rather rustic finishing. So Haberly wrote, illustrated, printed and bound this book.

Loyd Haberly was an Oregonian, from a poor background, who went to Harvard, where he eventually became a lecturer in International Law. He came to England as a Rhodes Scholar, and took a law degree at Trinity College, Oxford. He learned the rudiments of printing, binding and engraving at evening classes and from Emery Walker, and then personally constructed the building which housed his Seven Acres Press at Long Crendon in 1925. He explained the venture: "I took up printing as being a pleasant country craft affording a practical means of publishing my own writings and woodcuts, and inducing the profitable study of early and rare printed books". In 1934 Haberly stepped in as Controller of the Gregynog Press (where they had assumed him to be a Welshman), and remained for two years. During this time he supervised the press's production of Xenephon's Cyrupaedia, Bridge's Eros and Psyche and his own collection, Anne Boleyn and Other Poems.

Stock no. ebc4293